Before now, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) servers have been used to store data and deliver (download) that data over a network to clients when the clients request a download of that data.
When many clients request, to the FTP server, downloads of data on the FTP server within a certain period of time, a load in excess of the processing capacity of the FTP server is applied to the FTP server for the provision of the data to the clients; and sometimes the FTP server is unable to deliver the data in response to the data download requests from the clients.
As a result, for the FTP server to be able to transmit data in response to data download requests from many clients, resources on the FTP server side are expanded and the processing capacity thereof increased by techniques such as augmenting the CPU, memory, and the like comprised by the FTP server, or by distributing the requests from the clients and providing the data using a multiplicity of FTP servers.
However, no matter how greatly the FTP server resources are expanded and the processing capacity of the FTP server increased, the problem remains of the load becoming high due to a temporary spike in requests from clients. Moreover, during the execution of download processing from a server to many clients, it will sometimes happen that, depending on the capacity of the network circuits to which the server is connected, this capacity will form a bottleneck and good downloads to clients cannot be performed, no matter how great the processing capacity of the server.
Meanwhile, in recent years, the number of clients requesting data downloads from FTP servers has been increasing with the growth of the Internet and the spread of high speed communications means. The capacity of data provided by FTP servers has also been increasing. For this reason, the load on FTP servers is rapidly becoming high. Under such conditions, if data download requests from clients are concentrated at an FTP server beyond the processing capacity of the FTP server or the capacity of the network to deliver data to the clients, the FTP server will become unable to deliver data in response to these client requests.
This problem is not limited to the case of clients downloading data from FTP servers, and similarly occurs, for example, when clients request processes such as calculations from a server and the server executes the processes in response to these requests.